Redeem the Time

Had to type this up fast, but let’s play a quick game of “draw your own conclusions”:

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Traditional Catholic political philosophy holds that government exists for the sake of the common good.

Libertarians hold that government does not and/or cannot exist for the sake of the common good.
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Traditional Catholic political philosophy holds that men are naturally social, and thus government is natural and good.

Libertarians hold that government is, at best, a necessary evil.
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Traditional Catholic political philosophy holds that the end of the political community are goods that can only be attained in common by the members of said society—goods that, ultimately, all the members of society ought to desire.

Libertarians hold that the end of the political community is to bestow freedom on individuals so that they can attain what is good in their own eyes—goods that are primarily material and/or vary from individual to individual.
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You get the point.

The Catholic Church in America is asleep.

The real question is whether or not its sons and daughters can rouse it from its slumber.

I am getting extremely sick of hearing about “liberalism” in an undefined and general way in academic and religious circles. “Liberalism” has become a general term among some conservatives and Christians for “what I don’t like about western culture these days.” We baptise our discontents “liberalism” and then sloppily apply gobs of the term to whatever our particular notions of the failures of the United States and western culture happen to be.

I don’t think anyone can tell me where to go to read the most pre-eminent and renowned treatise on liberalism, because the word has been stretched too far to mean anything that specific. Regardless, remember to define this word should you ever use it. When you apply it to a nation or a culture think hard about these connections. I’m not sure when America officially adopted whatever “liberalism” is as our national creed, but some people seem to be sure of it.

Furthermore, these same people rarely seem to want to tell us what we should adopt instead of espousing whatever “liberalism” is, thus leaving us in the dark as to what they are trying to tell us.

Therefore, I propose:

1) Anyone who uses the word “liberalism” in speech or in writing ought to be required to give a specific definition of the term under penalty of public flogging.

2) Anyone who uses the word “liberalism” to describe the problems of our regime and culture must not only rigorously define the word, but give us specific solutions, or at least describe the un-liberalism that we should adopt and thus the way that our regime and culture ought to be—under penalty of being ignored as an unserious, common naysayer.

When it comes to describing the American founding, lots of people love to play a “gotcha” game of intellectual history. For instance, many people talk about Locke, the English thinker, a lot more than the founders did while they ignore all the other thinkers the founders mention. There are an infinite number of ways to judge and characterize the American regime that are similarly misleading. These people ignore what ought to be the most significant way to understand the American regime—to consider its founding and/or form in the context of political philosophy.

Of course, in order to do this one must understand the founding, and this is where everyone gets lost in the “who influenced who” problems that immediately arise if we take up this task. Aristotle famously put together a collection of constitutions for a reason. Given what Aristotle wrote about politics, I think that if Aristotle wanted to judge the American regime the first thing he would do is read the Declaration and the Constitution and inquire about the historical facts that relate to them. Regardless of culture, the plain words of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution remain, and if we take their author’s words and the plain history of their creation seriously we should regard these documents as expressing what America is regardless of all the thoughts and schools of thought that may or may not have gone into their making.

The last two posts remind me of a marvelous passage in C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength. The wizard Merlin is reawakened after a centuries old sleep, and goes to a house in modern day England. He comments on what is to him a very puzzling fact: he has been able to have a bath fit for a king, but there is no servant to help him. (Anyone kind enough to type in the sentence or two from the book and email it to me wins my good wishes for the day.)

This passage fits with the quotation from the article I posted below by Rodney Stark concerning capitalism and free labor. Slavery or servitude was the only way to accomplish such a bath in the past, but now almost everyone has hot running water on demand. Of course, as the passage below also says, people must work harder themselves for what they have (without the benefit of slaves.) This is not incongruent with virtue—in fact, as Father Schall was recently quoted saying on the Acton Institute blog:

A certain amount of property or wealth is necessary to practice virtue, as Aristotle said. He also said that the greatest crimes do not arise from a lack of means or sustenance. Riches are often the worst environment in which to practice virtue.

The middle class provides political stability in part because it helps foster a more fundamental moral stability. When people are either desperately trying to preserve the lives and health of themselves and their families, or, on the other extreme, living purely off the sweat of other’s brows, it is difficult for virtue and happiness to be obtained by anyone in this life.

A lot of those inclined towards the intellectual life might mistakenly and crudely think that the classical tradition on these matters (as laid out, say, in Joseph Pieper’s eminently wise Leisure as the Basis of Culture) means that a society in which one has to work hard—or one in which, as in all capitalist societies, an emphasis is put on “earning a living”—is necessarily ignoble. Two brief clarifications: first, Pieper doesn’t mean to condone laziness, or the vice of sloth. The life of the mind requires incredible discipline and focus. Second, and more to the point, people have more leisure time and money than they know what to do with these days. Sure there are many false idols and errors swirling around in our culture, but the ultimate fault lies, as it so often does, not in the culture or the structure of the regime, but in ourselves.

Once again, I give you my skim quotes so you can read what I don’t have time to…

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There has been talk about the so-called “CrunchyCons” before around these parts—mostly over at Cozy Tea-Blue House. George Nash gives us an introduction to conservative Catholic Rod Dreher’s “CrunchyCon” politics in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Rod Dreher, a columnist and editor at the Dallas Morning News, is a self-confessed member of the vast right-wing conspiracy. As a lapsed Protestant who converted to Roman Catholicism several years ago, he is an unabashed religious and social conservative. He has little use for the morally relativist and libertine tendencies of modern liberalism. Too often, he says, “the Democrats act like the Party of Lust.”

But Mr. Dreher is also a passionate environmentalist, a devotee of organic farming and a proponent of the New Urbanism, an anti-sprawl movement aimed at making residential neighborhoods more like pre-suburban small towns. He dislikes industrial agriculture, shopping malls, television, McMansions and mass consumerism. Efficiency–the guiding principle of free markets–is an “idol,” he says, that must be “smashed.” Too often, he claims, Republicans act like “the Party of Greed.”

If this interests you at all you’ll want to take a look at Dreher’s National Review based CrunchyCon blog, which apparently aims to be a group blog that argues and fleshes out Dreher’s ideas. (Thanks to God’s Body for recently alerting us to it.)

My quick commentary:

Dreher speaks of culture more than political principle. Environmentalism and New Urbanism are sometimes opposed by conservatives because of their proponents desire for excessive government regulation and control, not because anyone likes ugly sprawl or desires to harm the environment. The “small is beautiful” philosophy that Dreher loves was used to great harm by the likes of Jerry “moonbeam” Brown when he was governor of California in the 70s. Culturally speaking, Dreher wants good things—I probably agree with him on lots—but I wonder if he points us to the best way of political action to attain these ends? I don’t know enough to say.

As far as consumerism goes—again, this is cultural, and I would likely agree with him on lots of commentary about culture. However, when speaking about political principles, one has to realize that 1) we have never let capitalism go completely unbridled in this country (does anyone think that CEO’s and most companies are above the law when, on the contrary, they are up to their necks in laws and regulations?); and 2) capitalism is still the best way we know of to keep the most people possible out of poverty. (See the next article I link to directly below these comments.) Again, I don’t know enough about Dreher’s political principles to think that I understand what he is all about, or to be comfortable giving him a thumbs up.

For instance, the WSJ article says that his book “is a reminder of the enduring tension on the right between those for whom the highest social good is freedom. . .and those for whom the highest social good is virtue.” I say that freedom is a necessary condition of virtue—that freedom ought to be understood as in the service of virtue—but that government must first and foremost secure freedom before it can help order it towards the virtue of the citizenry and the common good of the regime. The job of the good government and true statesman is then—to use unfortunate, modern terms—to make the citizen see how his self-interest is the same as the common interest; or, rightly said: how his desire for self-preservation ultimately leads directly and smoothly up towards a more rational and noble desire to defend, love and contribute to the common good. Likely many conservative Catholics sort of, kind of understand and agree about some of these more fundamental notions, but of course they differ widely about how the common good is best accomplished. I wonder about if and how Dreher thinks about the principles of politics and how they promote virtue, as I get the sense he holds deeper principles derived from Russell Kirk and Southern agrarianism that are likely fantastical. So I’m not sure what would happen if one started to push his ideas to their roots in political philosophy. But, hey, I’m all for organic milk—it just tastes better. And thanks to capitalism, I can drink it fresh whenever I want.

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Dreher and the rest of us may not like consumerism, which is always the vice of capitalism (or better put: consumerism, which is always the vice of any society that isn’t full of extremely impoverished people), but a guy named Rodney Stark has a new book out called The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. Some solid conservatives are likely right to admit that he engages in some “exaggeration in the service of correction.” Nonetheless, it still sounds interesting—here is the author’s own words from a recent article:

Augustine, Aquinas, and other major theologians taught that the state must respect private property and not intrude on the freedom of its citizens to pursue virtue. In addition, there was the central Christian doctrine that, regardless of worldly inequalities, inequality in the most important sense does not exist: in the eyes of God and in the world to come. As Paul explained: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor fee, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

And church theologians and leaders meant it. Through all prior recorded history, slavery was universal — Christianity began in a world where as much as half the population was in bondage. But by the seventh century, Christianity had become the only major world religion to formulate specific theological opposition to slavery, and, by no later than the 11th century, the church had expelled the dreadful institution from Europe. That it later reappeared in the New World is another matter, although there, too, slavery was vigorously condemned by popes and all of the eventual abolition movements were of religious origins.

Free labor was an essential ingredient for the rise of capitalism, for free workers can maximize their rewards by working harder or more effectively than before. In contrast, coerced workers gain nothing from doing more. Put another way, tyranny makes a few people richer; capitalism can make everyone richer. Therefore, as the northern Italian city-states developed capitalist economies, visitors marveled at their standards of living; many were equally confounded by how hard everyone worked.

I was pointed to the book via this. Poke around at Google Scholar and do some research on the topic.

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Common wisdom about America’s science gap is trashed in this short piece by Robert Samuelson:

. . . it’s emphatically not true, as much of the alarmist commentary on America’s “competitiveness” implies, that the United States now faces crippling shortages in its technological elites.

Only about 4 percent of the U.S. work force consists of scientists and engineers. Having an adequate supply depends on what thousands — not millions –of smart college students decide every year to do with their lives. People choose a career partly because it suits their interests. This applies especially to science. “Physics is like sex,” the physicist Richard Feynman famously quipped. “Sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.” But intellectual satisfaction goes only so far.

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“Nobody writes about the planes that land”

In the early 1990s, a smattering of HIV cases appeared among individuals not then assigned to any known risk group; suddenly AIDS was moving into the general population. (It didn’t, and hasn’t, and likely never will, at least in the United States.) Despite a decade of media-inflamed mad cow hysteria, the government reports just two infected animals in the nation and not a single documented death among U.S.-born citizens. And now there’s bird flu.

Plenty of draft posts building up. In the meantime, instead of actually reading the few recent articles I wanted to read this morning, I’ll skim to some choice quotes and put ‘em up for your enjoyment:

Our difficulty in pursuing a rational foreign policy in the Middle East—or anywhere else—is compounded by the fact that we ourselves, as a nation, seem to be as confused as the Iraqis concerning the possibility of non-tyrannical majority rule. We continue to enjoy the practical benefits of political institutions founded upon the convictions of our Founding Fathers and Lincoln, but there is little belief in God-given natural rights, which are antecedent to government, and which define and limit the purpose of government. Virtually no one prominent today, in the academy, in law, or on government, subscribes to such beliefs. Indeed, the climate of opinion of our intellectual elites is one of violent hostility to any notion of a rational foundation for political morality. We, in short, engaged in telling others to accept the forms of our own political institutions, without any reference to the principles or convictions that give rise to those institutions.

—The Central Idea, by Harry Jaffa
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As a people we Americans are committed to the equal worth and dignity of every human being — and, hence, every member of our community. When we ask whose good counts in the common good, we seek to answer that question in ways which include the weak, the incapacitated, and the vulnerable — not in ways that narrow and constrict the number of those to whom we are obligated and for whom we should care.

If that is the political commitment of this country, several things follow. We will not casually suggest that becoming a human being depends on development of various capacities over time without attempting with rigor and seriousness to define and describe the point at which this actually happens — the point at which we have among us another one of us whose good should count in the common good. It will not do simply to opine blithely that “it is the journey that makes a human” without offering any serious description of when that journey begins or ends.

“That Thing in a Petri Dish”, Gilbert Meilaender & Robert P. George of the President’s Council on Bioethics are roused into argument by a liberal colleague’s recent NY Times op-ed.
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Q: Was Washington a Deist, or not?

A: Washington’s names for God sometimes sounded deist, but the actions his prayers asked God to perform belong to the biblical God, not the god of the philosophers. Washington believed that God favored the cause of liberty, and should be beseeched to “interpose” his actions on behalf of the Americans- and he often called for public thanksgiving for the many ways in which Americans “experienced” God’s hand in events. He believed God could inspire thoughts and courage in human hearts, and give men fortitude to persevere in extreme difficulties. He held that praying for favors imposed duties on him who prayed.

Washington’s reflections on the workings of Providence were deep, and hardened by the crucible of experience. On these matters, he was a Christian, not a deist.

Q: Weren’t many people at that time both Deists and Christians at the same time?

A: Yes. In Washington’s time, many bishops, priests, and serious lay people had a Deist sensibility — they preferred philosophical language in religion. Actually, such a preference went back many centuries.

Divining W: Inside Washington’s God, Michael & Jana Novak talking about their new book.
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“Low but solid” my foot. Here are some more quotations for all those who carelessly throw around these terms in the midst of their sloppy and supposedly Catholic criticisms of American government:

Nothing can be more fallacious than to found our political calculations on arithmetical principles.
—Federalist 55

The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.
—Federalist 57

It is too early for politicians to presume on our forgetting that the public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued; and that no form of government whatever has any other value than as it may be fitted for the attainment of this object. Were the plan of the convention adverse to the public happiness, my voice would be, Reject the plan. Were the Union itself inconsistent with the public happiness, it would be, Abolish the Union. In like manner, as far as the sovereignty of the States cannot be reconciled to the happiness of the people, the voice of every good citizen must be, Let the former be sacrificed to the latter.
—Federalist 45

But it is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government.
—Federalist 49

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradnally induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.
—Federalist 51

To a people as little blinded by prejudice or corrupted by flattery as those whom I address, I shall not scruple to add, that such an institution may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions. As the cool and deliberate sense of the community ought, in all governments, and actually will, in all free governments, ultimately prevail over the views of its rulers; so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind? What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against the tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statues on the next.
—Federalist 63

There are some who would be inclined to regard the servile pliancy of the Executive to a prevailing current, either in the community or in the legislature, as its best recommendation. But such men entertain very crude notions, as well of the purposes for which government was instituted, as of the true means by which the public happiness may be promoted. The republican principle demands that the deliberate sense of the community should govern the conduct of those to whom they intrust the management of their affairs; but it does not require an unqualified complaisance to every sudden breeze of passion, or to every transient impulse which the people may receive from the arts of men, who flatter their prejudices to betray their interests. It is a just observation, that the people commonly INTEND the PUBLIC GOOD. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always REASON RIGHT about the MEANS of promoting it. They know from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more than they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it. When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure.

But however inclined we might be to insist upon an unbounded complaisance in the Executive to the inclinations of the people, we can with no propriety contend for a like complaisance to the humors of the legislature. The latter may sometimes stand in opposition to the former, and at other times the people may be entirely neutral. In either supposition, it is certainly desirable that the Executive should be in a situation to dare to act his own opinion with vigor and decision.
—Federalist 71

As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealousy of some among us faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be, that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.
—Federalist 55

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
—Federalist 51

Ah, I scoff at liberalism, and all other abstract -isms that have anything to do with the -ity that is modernity. Fie upon our Enlightenment era Founders, bound to the silly but evil early modern philosophies of their time and place. It is unfortunate that they thought of government and ethics and politics as mechanistic and machine-like, something only to calculate and balance self-interest. Ah, liberalism, thou art the root of all that is evil in the world today!

Or something. Again, if this is liberalism, than give me more:
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The American Founders were so not in line with Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas on politics and ethics. To even say such a thing is absurd. First off, the Founders, like, lived way after the ancients and medievals. Second, they, like, were from a different culture and stuff. And culture and history are what define and create truth. So Q.E.D. you bad America lovers, and long live the Holy Roman Empire!

Heh. If this is the unsalvageable, rotten core of liberalism and modernity, then give me more liberalism and modernity:
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